Questions, questions!

The purpose of this blog is to include you in some of our adventures, discoveries and challenges as we begin our new life here in Namibia.
If you have any questions (‘I wonder how they …?’, ‘What is it like when …?’ ‘Do they have …?’), please feel free to email me and I will do my best to answer them.

One thing David had confirmed when he did that week of travelling to the existing TEE groups is their eagerness to be taught. We know we can’t do much until we have a much better grasp on the language, but they ask ‘how long until you can come to us?’, so it is a great incentive to knuckle down and study Oshiwambo.
Another hard thing is the number of people who really want to enrol in TEE but have no income and no one to sponsor them. In one prison David visited, people in the Netherlands said they would sponsor four people. Whom do you choose and to whom do you say ‘no’?

One creature we have not met yet is an ‘ekiki’ (pencil-tailed tree rat). As its name suggests, it builds its nest in trees, and is definitely on the menu here. As are frogs, caterpillars and beetles!

Here is an advert – one of many such - from the ‘Health and Beauty’ section of the classifieds in the national newspaper, the Namibian:
Mr Kibobola – traditional healer
He can treat diseases others have failed to offer:
Unfaithful partner.
Want a baby? Get one now.
Love potions.
Bad luck, pregnancy, gambling, witchcraft and court problems are solved.
Bring back lost lover.
Cure HIV.

Étienne was reading a book the other day and commented …
‘Dad, it says here - if you or Mum were 60 you might have a heart attack’.
Thanks for the vote of confidence, Étienne!

Some facts:
• When next browsing magazines whilst waiting in checkout queues, think of Namibia where they Sellotape the front and back pages together to prevent pre-buying peeking!
• Alcohol is sold Monday to Saturday, with padlocks on fridge dispensers on Sunday as it is against the law to sell it.
• For you South Africans, the word ‘Muti’ comes from the Bantu word ‘omuti’ which means tree or plant.
• We have no post box here in Ongwediva. If we want to post a letter we have to take it into the post office, when it is open, and hand it in!
• Did you know that crocodiles can have up to 10kg of stones in their stomach? This is not, as previously thought, to aid digestion, but to enable them to float just under the surface, with only their eyes and nostrils protruding.
• Did you know that the Northern Namibian dung beetle is listed in the Guinness Book of records as the largest Southern African insect?!
• Warning for the tourist: when offering sweets to Namibians in your car, DON’T pass the WHOLE packet to the back of the car unless you don’t want any more sweets. It will NOT return.

Ndapandura, one of our language helpers, told us why she had to leave school in Standard 7. A goat ate her schoolbooks and her parents could not afford to either replace them or pay the school for their loss. So she had to go to work in the fields from then on.

After our language lesson today we put on the DVD of ‘The God’s must be crazy’ for Amalia. She laughed and exclaimed all the way through and loved every minute of it!

28 April
We have 12 days left on our permit. Still no word from the ‘powers that be’. We are so glad to know that God is in control of every circumstance surrounding the visa issue.

As I write, someone has come to the door asking to enrol in the distance education course. A woman arrived last Saturday to do the same. We don’t think people understand that David’s involvement is minimal at the moment; they are simply delighted to have “local” access to the courses. David has been at the Ondangwa trade fair this week, practicing his Oshiwambo and manning a table about NETS. All sort of people are there, even one woman selling, among other things, cow pats for cooking fires!

2 May
whilst having my evening ‘constitutional’ the other day, I greeted a young man with the usual ‘Wa tokelwa po?’ (Is the sun white for you? How is your evening?).
He came up and asked me, ‘Do you love Jesus?’
‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I love Jesus. Do you?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Then we are brother and sister in Christ’, I answered, and shook his hand again. So we have family everywhere, don’t we!